The UpTake: Vern Raburn says it took an intense six weeks to sell his company, Titan Aerospace, to Google. The solar-powered drone maker may seem like an odd purchase for the search and advertising giant. But its technology could be key for Google to get the Internet to remote corners of the globe.

Last Monday morning at 1 a.m., Vern Raburn finally got the last call and signed the last document that made it official.

After six weeks of intense due diligence work with Google, the Titan Aerospace CEO was finally signing the papers to sell the startup to Internet powerhouse Google.

“This has been done in record time. This is the quickest merger I’ve ever been a part of,” Raburn told Albuquerque Business First. “I had no sleep from Thursday to Sunday.”

Raburn has been the CEO of Titan since last fall, but he doesn’t have a Google title yet.

Titan, or Google, is developing a solar-powered drone that Raburn calls an “atmostat,” or atmospheric satellite. The idea is to bring the functionality of a satellite, such as mapping, GPS or even communications, to the high atmosphere at a fraction of the cost of launching a space-bound satellite.

Today, though, Titan’s hangar at the Moriarty Airport couldn’t look any less Google. It looks homebuilt, and Raburn agrees.

Chewbacca the friendly guard dog sits in the shade of a trailer that serves as the company offices. Visitors park in a dusty lot off to the side, and mechanics blast Styx songs from boom boxes while they work on Piper Cubs in the hangars next door.

In the Titan hangar, however, several radio-controlled planes hang from the rafters next to the first atmostat prototype.

On the floor, little drops of oil ooze and drip off a new, desk-sized mock-up of a wing for a full-sized prototype. The company tested the wing’s efficiency by attaching it to the bed of Raburn’s bright red Dodge pickup and drove it down the runway.

“We release oil on the leading edge to validate the air flow,” Raburn said. “You may not do this with a (Boeing) Triple-7.”

Though Boeing’s technology is on the cutting edge of one end of the aviation spectrum, “We are at the leading edge of the other end,” Raburn said. “We fly at 65,000 feet where you have five percent of the atmosphere. We need lift.”

Instead of focusing on strength or comfort, Titan is focusing on weight savings, aerodynamics and giant wings that create so much lift that the giant plane can almost be launched by hand, Raburn said. Launching the homebuilt prototype from the back of Raburn’s truck, the plane glides away at 20 miles per hour, he said.

The wing section is indeed incredibly light. It’s made of a carbon fiber honeycomb, with plastic wrap stretched over it. It’s liftable with one finger.

Everything is made in house, from the work benches and the autoclave, to each individual wing spar.

“This is a classic startup. We have very few things we buy off the shelf. That’s how a little, itty-bitty, company can do this.”

Still, the company will need to grow, Raburn said.

“We’re going to build a larger facility. I don’t know how big it’s going to be, it’s not even designed yet,” he said. Raburn also made clear that the company’s future is in Moriarty for now.

The facility will have to be much bigger, however, to simply fit the giant plane inside. The wingspan will be 30 meters. The final commercial version, however, will have a 60-meter wingspan — about the same as a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.

Each wing is covered in solar panels that charge batteries. Those batteries are the same batteries Tesla uses in its cars, Raburn added.

“Part of the bet on this airplane is that battery technology goes on and gets better,” he said.

And as batteries get better, the planes will be able to stay in the air for as long as five years.

But, he said, it will still take months, if not years, of work to develop the planes.

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